what we saw from the cheap seats
by sistem
Summary: Jane starts packing for Norway and Darcy starts packing for Virginia because she understands the only reason why she got as far as she did with the whole assistant gig was because she accidentally peeked behind the curtains of reality. Or something. OR. Jane and Darcy's Excellent Adventure In Breaking the Laws of Physics and Bending the Fabric of Space
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer**: I own nothing.

This was suppose to be a slice of life fic but it got wildly out hand. Also, wildly un-betaed.

* * *

Jane gets an offer to an institute in Norway as a fellow and Darcy watches her salivate over the email in Puente Antiguo. It takes her about two minutes of pure joy before her thumbs start flying across her phone's keyboard ("Keyboard, really Jane, get with the touchscreen revolution," Darcy scoffs from beneath print outs and print outs of stars and galaxies). Jane lets out a trill of excitement five minutes after she sends her confirmation as another email comes into her phone telling her they wanted her as soon as possible, like within the next 36 hours possible, and that all the travel plans will be take care of as soon as she can give them a time.

SHIELD is oddly accommodating in their abrupt change of venue, offering to pack up their equipment and FedEx it to them or whatever the equivalent of a Super Secret Government-Paramilitary Group of FedEx is. There were probably ninjas involved. All Darcy sees are Hunks in Black parachuting with the equipment into the building and leaving with a stern look in their eyes, saying "Ma'am" to her and –

Oh.

So maybe, somewhere along the way, Darcy forgets that she only has a degree in Poli Sci (Class of 2012 baby, whatwhat!) instead of doctorates upon doctorates and actually started thinking that she was of value to Jane. But now she's going to Norway with smart people who talked her language of rainbow bridges and equations with Greek letters.

After the whole Destroyer destroying debacle, they stayed in Puente Antiguo for the rest of the summer because there's no better place to test possible Earth-destroying experiments than New Mexico, apparently. Once they've exhausted the summer days, they all returned to Virginia because Erik and Jane still worked for Culver University and Darcy still had to finish her senior year there.

During the school year, Darcy still helped Jane collect data (i.e. drive her around the van while she screamed readings at Darcy) while Erik is recruited by some fancy research institute in New York that's all very hush-hush. Darcy may have seen Agent I-took-your-iPod-for-national-security coming out of the Physics department, but that's something that she'll never admit to because she's pretty sure she's already in their radar for the whole Thor Incident.

Jane and Darcy go back to New Mexico the summer after she graduates, Darcy with a shiny new title and a pay that's a little bit above minimum wage and Jane with more research and a grant from the government.

And for about two months, all they did was drive around the desert, following stars, eating Burger King and shop unironically at Wal-Mart. And then Jane starts packing for Norway and Darcy starts packing for Virginia because she understands the only reason why she got as far as she did with the whole assistant gig was because she accidentally peeked behind the curtains of reality. Or something.

At the end of the work day, Jane is still vibrating form excitement, intermittently whispering, "_Tromsø_," reverently to herself and looking at Darcy with glee and repeating, "Tromsø!"

Darcy smiles at her boss, the happiness not being something she has to fake but the disappointment something she has to hide. She starts boxing the most recent print outs and photographs and watches as SHIELD people start doing the same to the heavier equipment.

As she carefully marks the box using their ridiculously intricate labeling system, Jane calls out from the other side of the room, "Oh! I forgot to tell you, it gets colder there than Virginia or here so if you have one of those puffy jacket? Like the Stay Puft ones? Pack it. I'm not sure if peacoats are gonna cut it, but-"

Darcy is very confused. "What."

Jane stops glaring at a SHIELD agent packing to her left and seems confused at Darcy's confusion, "What do you mean what? It's like those big puffy ones? Like the skiing ones? You know, they're all shiny and big?"

Darcy continues to stare at her in confusion and says slowly, "Why do I need a puffy jacket?"

Jane looks at her with some concern and approaches her desk, "Because it gets cold in Norway?"

Okay. "Okay."

A flash of surprise crosses Jane's face then sheepishness, "Oh God. I'm sorry. I just thought because you signed up to be my assistant that you could come with – Oh my God. I'm sorry for assuming. I mean I know you can't just drop everything to go half way around the world with me and-"

Darcy watches her talk with a dazed look, "Wait."

Jane stops talking, and looks at her patiently. Slowly, Darcy says, "I'm… coming with you?"

The other woman smiles at her nervously, "I mean, if you want to. Because I understand if you can't. I do! I really do. And it was stupid of me to just assume –"

Darcy launches herself onto Jane, her grin splitting her face, "I thought you wouldn't need me! Oh my God, I thought you were gonna upgrade to someone who actually knows what they're doing."

They stumble back from Darcy's hug and a box or two fell on the floor with a loud bang. The SHIELD agents all stop what they're doing and reach for their (hidden) weapons. Jane makes a shooing motion behind Darcy and they all relax and continue packing while Jane continued hugging.

"So that's a yes?"

"Do we get to meet Erik's cousins or something?"

"Erik's from Sweden."

Darcy's still grinning, "Close enough."

* * *

Two days later they're in Norway and Jane is greeted by a lot of people with names Darcy can't even pretend to pronounce, spelled in a language she can't even think of reading. The most experience she has with languages that had slashes over O's was the opening credits for Monty Python and the Holy Grail and she really doesn't think anybody wants to hear about someone's sister being bit by a møøse.

Darcy thinks its super cool that science transcends the language barrier, that the solid equations on paper is enough to build a camaraderie between people. She tells this to Jane.

Who only looks at her pointedly and says, "They speak English-"

"Science transcends all!" Darcy says quickly and loudly over the other woman's voice, her hands making intricate circles in the air, somewhere between a curtsey and jazz hands.

Jane looks like she's about to argue with Darcy but then a groupie ("Colleague," Jane chastises, but seriously Darcy knows how to love something beyond societal norms and those? Were groupies) comes in wearing a University of Tromsø sweatshirt and starts shaking Jane's hands fervently. They start talking (in English, to Darcy's disappointment) about how excited the university was to have Jane, his voice seemingly getting higher and higher with each exclamation. Jane answers in the same pitch of voice how she's excited to work them and how amazing and honored she is to be working with the research in Auroral Light. Then the guy brings up one of her papers and then science broke out or something because Darcy doesn't even remember the rest of the conversation.

"Groupie," Darcy reminds her when he leaves.

Jane just gives her a look but then they're both distracted by the emptiness of the lab. It's much smaller than the one in New Mexico but since that was more of an abandoned used car showroom and less of a lab, Darcy's sure that Jane's content with the one they have. In Norway.

Because they were in Norway. In a university that specializes in the shit Jane does. Which is a fairly specific thing and Darcy didn't even know other people, let alone whole universities, cared about.

But now it was late and after the extensive meet and greet (there were several groupies), they were both just sitting around with nothing to really do since most of the equipment hasn't caught up with them yet. As it turns out the Super Secret Government-Paramilitary Group equivalent of FedEx is actually FedEx and first class mail doesn't necessarily mean that it can defy the laws of physics. So she and Jane are in the lab since the internet wasn't hooked up yet at the graduate housing they were staying at for the moment with Jane refreshing the tracking page every minute.

Darcy is on her own laptop sitting on one of the lab tables, legs swinging, also maybe kind of refreshing the tracking page when she notices the time and starts digging for something in her bag. When her fingers touch smooth foil she calls out to Jane, "Hey! Feeding time!"

Jane looks up from her laptop wearily, but catches the protein bar Darcy tosses at her, "Feeding time? Really?"

Darcy shrugs and opens her own less healthy energy bar and resumes refreshing the FedEx page. After a while she gets bored and logs onto facebook, contemplates posting a status about WOO NORWAY or LIVIN IT UP IN NORWEGIA, but she doesn't want to test the tensile strength of the NDA that she signed after the whole Asgard-on-Midgard action last summer and starts refreshing all over again. When she looks up, Jane has started equations that have already filled one of the white boards, the marker squeaking along the way.

She looks at her phone and makes a note to change the time and lays back, legs still dangling from the table and stares at the ceiling. Jane won't be needing her anytime soon, Darcy recognizes that particular combination of furrowed brow and hunched shoulders as one of Deep Thoughts. She lets her eyes flutter close, the fluorescent light that seemed so bright a second earlier dimming behind her eyelids.

She jerks to an upright position when someone knocks on the open door to tell them that their apartment was all fixed up and ready for civilized living. Her still wrong watch tells her that half an hour has passed and at the time, Jane managed to fill two and a half whiteboards and various pieces of paper.

She waves to get the dude's attention who was starting to stare in awe of Jane and smiles, "Hey, thanks, we know the way."

He smiles back and stumbles out an accented reply that may have included your welcome and to call if they need anything but Darcy's already packing her and Jane's things. She organizes the pieces of paper with Jane's notes on it based on the handwriting – the legibility decreases as time progressed meaning Jane starts with neat little sentences and ends with weird notations and scribbles that only she can read.

Pulling Jane out of the scientific groove is a process, usually she'd be actively doing shit that Darcy can just interrupt by grabbing whatever equipment is in her hand, but when she's doing her equation mojo, it was a bit more difficult. To startle her is nigh impossible since she shuts out everything and has the danger of making her lose her handle on an idea, which was fine since Darcy has a script that was entirely well rehearsed.

First, she calls out softly, "Jane." This will not get much other than a slight twitch, an acknowledgement of the outside world.

Then, within arms reach, "Jane." This usually gets "Hmm?" An integral step to the process.

And finally, Darcy crosses the space between them and grabs her shoulder and gives it a light shake or a squeeze depending on whether or not she's writing something. This generally gets her attention. But if it doesn't, well, rinse and repeat.

"Hey, come on, let's go see how fancy Norwegian university housing is."

Jane looks doubtful but puts down the marker and sighs, "Fine. I wouldn't get too excited though. It's still a university apartment."

"Yeah, but I mean, from the land of Ikea, how bad can it be?"

"That's still Sweden."

* * *

The apartment is entirely cliché. It's all bland plaster walls and dubious stains with the standard super heavy furniture that's suppose to stop people from stealing them but really just ends up being part of a hazing ritual. It was not at all Ikea and Darcy was not at all impressed. The pantry and fridge is stocked with some standard cereal and milk bullshit, not that Darcy doesn't appreciate it, but foreign cereal isn't exactly what she had in mind for dinner.

There is a nice little TV in the middle of the living room and a channel guide that Darcy can't read with channels that she doesn't recognize. But considering she's spent her fair amount of sleepless nights watching QVC, this was not going to be a problem.

Everything was so very standard which is why it was kind of surprising to see people in very tailored suits surrounding the building in very big SUVs. And then, before she can call out to Jane in the kitchenette, a knock on the door breaks a tension that apparently she only feels because Jane looks at her like a crazy person for freezing at the sound.

A badge is shoved in Jane's face when she opens the door, the same one that was shoved in their faces right before all their equipment was seized in New Mexico.

"Dr. Foster? We need to speak with you," the man says and gives Darcy a sideways glance, like she's dirt on his shiny, shiny shoes, "alone."

"Excuse me?" the same righteous fury is in Jane's face from all those months ago, "Unless you managed to hijack that FedEx plane in Barcelona with all my equipment, I don't think we have anything to talk about."

"Ma'am, you misunderstand why were here. This is about the safety of-"

Jane waves him off, "Yeah, yeah, safety of the nation. But I'm not sure if you've noticed? But we're kind of in a foreign nation. This is stretching a little bit beyond your jurisdiction, isn't it?"

The man gives an affronted look like he's insulted that someone would suggest that there's a limit to SHIELD's jurisdiction. The expression is microscopic though because a second later it's back to normal automaton when he says, "No, ma'am the safety of you and your work."

And as an afterthought, "And Ms. Lewis."

Darcy snorts, "Of course."

The man doesn't pay attention to her retort, more intent on not noticing the girl with the insufficient clearance and pretending she wasn't there.

Jane stands her ground, "You can't just breeze through and expect me to drop everything just because-"

"Ma'am, you misunderstand. We're not here to take you back stateside. We're here to make sure you're safe _here_."

Darcy retreats to her room without having to be told. She can actually see the bureaucratic red tape materializing all over the conversation that was about to happen. So she settles in her new bed and checks CNN, a vestige from being a poli sci major. It's not quite the same as watching it, but she's not entirely sure if the CNN here will be in English and besides, the TV was outside. With Jane and Mystery Agent, and-

Oh. "Oh."

Dwarfing Anderson Cooper's magnificent hair/face combo is a grainy CCTV still from Germany. A man dressed in what Darcy can only describe as a steam-punk-Shakespearean-Viking ensemble is at the head of the steps of a building. There are roughly four more of the same man surrounding a circle of people, like they were being herded. The caption reads, in big, red letters, ATTACK IN STUTTENGARD.

Darcy clicks on the link that directs her to the full article.

The article itself is short since it was basically still happening, but something about a man being killed, then Fancy Horns freaking multiplying, _like magic_, and herding his involuntary audience. There are more photos from different angles. Midway through the page, is a photo of Captain fucking America and Iron Man throwing down with Mr. Shakespeare when Darcy realizes why his attire looks so familiar.

She bursts into the living room, surprising Jane and, Darcy can only assume, making the agent's trigger finger twitch. He looks like he's about to say something about national security and clearance levels but she plops her laptop down the kitchen table and moves out of the way.

The agent sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose, "We were hoping we could lock this down for at least a few hours."

"That," he points to the screen, "is Loki. He is the reason why you need to stay here and keep a low profile. An extremely. Low. Profile."

Jane looks at them incredulously and so did Darcy but for a completely different reason, "Wait. Thor's brother, Loki? That Loki?"

After almost being killed by Norse mythology, Darcy thought that it'd be smart to take a class on it.

The agent makes a pained look, "That's classified."

Darcy snorts, "Yeah, buddy, sorry to break it to you but any freshman that takes a world myth class pretty much knows that. Besides," she clicks on a youtube link in the article, "I'm pretty sure this just went beyond classified."

The video is from someone's shaky phone cam and it shows a small helicopter thing, armed to the teeth if Darcy's going by the amount of destruction, a woman's voice booms from the speakers, "Loki, drop the weapon and stand down."

He looks like he's about to have some sort of conniption so Darcy closes the laptop gently and leans back on the counter and look to Jane. The other woman is deep in thought, a different look of confusion on her face. Then, as if the right neurons connected in her head, she looks sharply at the agent, "Has the Einstein-Rosen Bridge been opened?"

The agent looks at Darcy and her non-clearance having ass with such a pained face she almost felt bad, so she says, "Dude, I was there when it opened the first time. So, you know." She makes a shooing motion for him to turn back to Jane who looks like wants to develop laser eyes or something so she can incinerate the man who didn't tell her the rainbow bridge opened.

"The bridge has not been opened. If it was and you weren't the one to open it, I'm sure you'd be one of the first people to know."

Jane deflates a bit, "But, if he's also from Asgard, how did he get here? I, can I talk to him? Just a bit?"

"Ma'am, an interaction between you and Loki is literally the thing I'm suppose to prevent."

"Then explain to me how the hell he got here, because that seems pretty goddamn relevant to my work!" Jane exclaims in a voice that Darcy recognizes is reserved for university department heads and grant committees.

He looks suspiciously at Darcy who throws her hands in the air and makes a noise of aggravation. She gathers her laptop and heads back to her room.

She walks as slow as she can, only catching, "Loki did not arrive through the same means as Thor did…"

Darcy closes the bedroom door. It didn't really matter, Jane will pretty much tell her anything that she'd need to know later.

Instead, Darcy sits back down her bed and opens her laptop again. She refreshes CNN for more shaky videos of Iron Man and Captain America (_Captain America_!) clashing with Loki in the middle of a German city.

She wonders if this is going to be a thing in her life now. Tasing gods and watching an old American war-propaganda fight a Norse myth with a billionaire.

* * *

Jane agrees to stay in Norway and to keep a low profile, which Darcy doesn't even understand because Jane doesn't exactly keep any other kind of profile. Well, except for that one time a wormhole opened in front of them, but she didn't even start that one. So.

Darcy figures out the TV within the hour that SHIELD leaves, or well, "leaves", because she's pretty sure they just doubled the population of the whole campus. She finds the CNN that's (mostly) English and just watches it on loop. She shakes herself out of the daze every so often to make sure Jane eats and aggregates her notes into something manageable for posterity's sake.

Their equipment arrives the next day in heavily stamped FedEx boxes, stacked in the lab. Jane looks like she wants to gather every single box and squeeze it until they leave for college and never call home.

A gaggle of scientists comes in fifteen minutes later, inviting Jane to a makeshift conference where Darcy assumes they just sit in circle and gush about the speed of light. Jane looks torn between being reunited with her equipment and talking about science so Darcy shoos her away, promising to unpack the important things.

The boxes are numbered by the frequency Jane uses them (Jane scoffed at this system, _Darcy's System of Common Sense_, like somebody just told her that she loved one of her children over the another, but, well, someone's gotta be the Gob Bluth of the family) so she opens boxes one through ten and pulls out the lightest of bunch. Darcy doesn't have much by way of upper body strength.

This becomes an hour of busy work for her and by the time she organizes the equipment she can lift, she goes about organizing the rest of the lab. Jane's equations from the night they arrived are still on the boards so she takes several pictures of those on her phone, to be stored in the giant folder known as JANE'S WHITEBOARD and scans the notes she took on paper into another giant folder known as NOTES – JANE THESE ARE THE NOTES. It took her three days to organize Jane's hard drive because Jane is from the school of Save to Documents and her desktop was an even bigger mess of downloaded attachments.

Darcy's parents were CPA's. Organization is hereditary.

Procrastination, however, was something entirely hers.

She takes a break and debates whether or not to eat some of the decidedly unhealthy food they packed for snacks or to actually go out and eat. Her laptop pretty much makes the decision for her and she hunkers down for some Pop-Tarts and whatever new episode of whatever was on Hulu.

Actually, fuck that. She's gonna piratebay all the episodes. Because she's in Norway.

("Still Sweden," said no one, because even she knows that.)

* * *

On the third day, boxes eleven through twenty-five are opened with twelve through seventeen unpacked and Jane is getting into her science groove, which is actually a lot less sociable than it sounds. Grooving for Jane means she's basically down to eating what Darcy forces her to eat and only leaves when she starts falling asleep on her feet. Which isn't that much different from any other day but she talks less to Darcy.

Darcy's job has more than its fair share of downtime; it consists mostly of letting things accumulate so that she can put them in order. So she's usually left to play 3D Tetris on her phone more times than not, kind of going into this nice little period of peace while Jane talks to herself in the background. It becomes a nice buzz in the background that she becomes accustomed to, so when the room becomes silent except for the soft tapping of her nail on her iPhone she becomes suspicious.

Jane may have dropped dead. Jane may have jumped out of the window in frustration (which will only lead to more frustration because they're in the first floor). Or. Jane may have figured out Step 1 to opening the Bifrost.

Or the very least, Step 1 to Step 1 of opening the Bifrost. But Step 1 is Step 1 and this could very well be their El Alamein; the end of the beginning.

Jane looks at her with such excitement when she tells this to Darcy and all Darcy can think to say is, "Shut. Up."

They rush to each other's side of the room, meeting halfway and started jumping while hugging and hugging while jumping.

"Oh my god. You'll be the chick who opened a wormhole."

"That's Dr. Chick who Opened a Wormhole."

* * *

Getting alcohol in a foreign country where you don't speak the language is actually kind of daunting because Darcy doesn't know if they're drinking booze or what is essentially rubbing alcohol.

But as it turns out, vodka is vodka is vodka. Which is also not that hard to find in a university area, even in the summer.

They try to Skype Erik in New York (because SHIELD does not cover transatlantic drunk dials) but he's not online, though it would make sense since it's probably the crack of dawn there. At the same time, he hasn't been online in a while and it's not at all because he doesn't know how to run it because Darcy is a great fucking teacher and if her 85 year old Mee-Maw can learn then so can a man with several degrees.

Erik and the lack of his online presence are forgotten in favor of more shots. The Swedish bastard can hear about the rainbow bridge another day.

And whatever, because Norwegians throw _down_.

* * *

The next morning is a mess, well several hours later, because Darcy is still technically jetlagged and did she mention that in the summer there's no actual night? Something about having a really high latitude. Whatever. It only fucked up Darcy's internal clock even more.

She stands in the shower for forever, contemplating every bad decision she's ever made when Jane barges in the bathroom and demands a turn. This is the start of a very bad porno somewhere but Darcy's too disoriented to even make a joke so she just grabs her robe and wraps it around her without drying off while Jane looks like she's about to get in the shower with her clothes on.

There's a trail of water that leads to her room and what has to be a puddle accumulating under her bed because like hell if she's getting dried off and dressed. After a while, even she gets tired of the dampness and secures her wet hair in a towel and puts on a sweatshirt-leggings combo that she pretty much rocked throughout the last two years of college. Being an upperclassman means knowing which battles to fight and which to concede to. Eight am classes are battles in which you hand in a white flag in the first day in exchange for the syllabus.

She lifts her laptop from the bedside table and flops onto her bed, her body following soon after. She does the daily ritual of checking her email, all of them, then facebook, then Skype. _Still no Erik_, flitters across her head.

CNN though, CNN was exploding.

Darcy's pretty good with hangovers in that she's always managed to soldier through them. Puking isn't something that happens frequently because she knows better than to move when she's down for the count, but right now. Right now, she would like to chuck in the upward direction.

She stumbles into the living room simultaneously looking for the remote and calling out, "Jane! Sweet baby Jesus, Jane!"

Darcy finds the remote and it's in a local channel but it's playing a shitty camera's footage of New York getting decimated by _fucking aliens_.

Oh, also? Thor's there.

He's just a red blur, but Darcy sees the hammer smashing down on some weird-as-shit alien thing and Captain America is somewhere near him.

"Jesus Christ, Jane! Thor! I'm looking at Thor!"

There's a scramble of a shower curtain being pulled and for one terrifying moment all Darcy can see is Jane slipping in the goddamn shower because of her apparent inability to relay news without inducing panic, but then she's there next to Darcy dripping on the couch, clutching a towel.

They watch the news, the slow decimation of New York. Darcy tries to listen to the news, but it started becoming too foreign and Norwegian for her to understand. If the date on the corner of the footage of the fight was anything to go by, as they were drinking last night in celebration, the New York skyline was getting destroyed one building at a time.

Before she can ask Jane the cursory, _What the fuck?_s and _What the hell?_s, the other woman was gone, into her room, her door slamming in her wake.

She rises and follows tentatively; she's not entirely sure how to handle a situation like this. It's a bit more delicate than the usual, "I can't believe he didn't call me back!" situations with her other friends, mostly because "he" was the God of Thunder and the place he didn't call back from was another galaxy.

Darcy presses her ear to the door and starts to knock, but she can hear Jane's voice, steadily rising to the point that she didn't have to strain. In fact, she takes a step back and simply thanks paper-thin university housing walls.

Jane's shouting now, about being the first to be told if the bridge was opened, or any other way to travel presented itself, because she'd rather not do redundant work and really, if she's not needed, there were papers she could be writing, about non-confidential subjects, things that she can actually publish, instead of being forgotten in Norway, even though they promised to come back for her, and she's been waiting patiently and.

And.

And Darcy's actually pretty sure science is no longer the issue here and she takes a step back from Jane's room and lets her vent to some SHIELD peon who didn't have the foresight to keep her up to date. She'll wait until Jane gets the science part of her frustration out and needs to release the Thor part. She's not going anywhere.

If anything, they still have an impeccably full bottle of tequila somewhere from last night.

She drifts off on the couch, her hair still damp, with Jane's superhero boyfriend fighting aliens on TV. She's woken when Jane shuts the fridge door with a little bit more force and immediately looks apologetic.

"We goin' back?"

Jane looks even more apologetic but determined, "Tomorrow. We have a flight at one in the afternoon to New York." She sighs, tired, "I'd tell you to pack but I'm pretty sure you still are. I just. I'm sorry for dragging you through this whole thing."

Darcy looks at her seriously, "Listen, I could be back in New Jersey working at some diner, scraping to pay just the interest of my student loans. I mean I'm still doing the second part but at least alien princes are involved. Besides, it's not like you can get anyone else to follow your crazy ass."

Jane sits down next to her, "Yeah, probably not."

Darcy hums in agreement and lets the silence settle between them. Then: "Wait. What's in New York?"

Jane grins, "Science."

* * *

Their flight's been delayed by several hours and they're stuck in Oslo for the time being. They huddle around an outlet by their gate, making dumbfounded, "Speak English only, sorry," looks at anyone who tries to ask for a turn.

Whatever, Darcy refuses to share because she's deeply engrossed in finding out how Katniss and Peeta are going to survive the Quarter Quell on her laptop and no European is going to mess with that. Jane doesn't even respond anymore, too focused on her notes and trying to contact Erik through the shitty airport Wi-Fi to no avail.

"You know this is _their_ fault."

Darcy doesn't even have to ask the who in question is, "I really don't think SHIELD would hold an entire flight just to stop you from getting to New York. Besides, why would they even try to stop you?"

Jane gives her an exasperated look that seems to have an underlying tone of derision, as if to say, _You sad, sad sheeple._ Whatever, Jane probably also thinks Bigfoot is real and that they welcomed aliens in Roswell.

She apparently says this out loud because Jane snorts and says, "No, apparently _we_ do that."

Darcy ignores this because she's distracted by Finnick and _Oh my God, Mags_.

* * *

Their flight is redirected to Newark since New York's airspace became basically one giant no-fly zone, what with the aliens attacking a few days before. Darcy gives Jane a pointed look, who responds with her own look, "It's still technically their fault."

They're at the carousel and Darcy's reaching for her giant suitcase when some guy in a suit reaches it first and pulls it onto the ground. She sputters, reaching for, "Hey! Buddy, I really don't think the suitcase with Hello Kitty stickers is yours."

"Darcy."

She turns around to point out the blatant theft to Jane when she sees they're kind of surrounded by several people in suits. A woman was standing behind Jane dressed in a black (catsuit? Definitely catsuit) catsuit and looking ready to shoot someone.

She tilts her head to look at Darcy from behind Jane and Darcy's pretty sure she's having a heart attack because there's something terrifying behind those bangs.

She motions towards the exit and all the suits start dragging their luggage to that general direction. She moves so that she's between Jane and Darcy, looking at them both, "Agent Hill. Dr. Foster, Ms. Lewis, if you'll follow me."

They follow her all the way to New York.

* * *

Somewhere between Newark and the Holland Tunnel in an SUV with tinted, bulletproof windows, Darcy's clearance gets upgraded to something that suggests a higher pay grade than a little bit above minimum wage. Though, she senses then and there was not the right time to hash out benefits and copay. Agent Hill is a bit agitated with the fact that Jane all but forced her hand with the whole clearance-to-top-secret-information thing, but Jane throws the most dignified tantrums that usually ended up with her getting her way. Darcy's pretty sure she spoiled Jane in this regard.

They're not even out of New Jersey and Jane is starting to get fidgety, either from the lack of science or the lack of leg space, Darcy can't decide. She starts to nod off (jumping between time zones pretty much wrecks her internal clock and even though its two in the afternoon, her body is telling her its sleep o'clock) when Jane breaks the silence.

"Wait."

Agent Hill looks at her expectantly.

"Where are we going?"

Hill looks out the window for a second and turns back to Jane, "Where were you planning to go when you got on that plane?"

Now Jane is fidgety and getting agitated and Darcy does not think this SUV is big enough to handle the Foster Hissy Fit so she cuts in, "Oh, just you know, look for the hole Thor dropped out of and recreate it. Maybe storm your castle and harass Agent Search and Seizure. Which, by the by, he's usually the one that deals with us. What up with the disappearing act? Is he too good for us now? Did we break up?"

"That's classified."

"What? I thought we all agreed that I'm officially rocking the DEFCON One clearance thing?"

Hill makes a face that looks like she wants to snort but was valiantly holding it in. _For America. _

"Your clearance is nowhere near high enough. Let's put it this way, outside of Dr. Foster's research, you're basically only cleared to know the pin to the bathrooms."

"What, not even the code for the copy machine?"

"Hey," Jane cuts in, which is a shame because Darcy's pretty sure she was building a rapport, or as much rapport you can build with a woman who looks at her like she's something stuck to the bottom of her boots, "you didn't answer my question. Where are you taking us?"

"And you never answered mine."

Jane takes a deep breath, like the one she takes when Darcy doesn't know the difference between dead white guys who have numbers named after them, "I. _We_ were going to investigate Thor's reappearance. I need to talk to him about how the Bridge was reopened."

_And why he hasn't called after disappearing then reappearing into the void_, Darcy adds.

Hill raises a brow that looks like it's brought lesser men to their knees but Jane has her Dr. Foster face on so it's a pretty even match. "And how were you planning to track him down?"

Darcy sighs because this is obviously not leading them anywhere other than to more questions and she stopped watching Lost for a reason, okay?

Hill plows on, "Suppose you did find him, what would you have done? You have no facilities here, no equipment, no resources. What were exactly planning to do?"

Jane is starting to look agitated again but before she explodes, Agent Hill answers the question that started it all, "We're taking you to the SHIELD facilities."

"And Thor," Jane's starting to look hopeful, "he's going to be there?"

Darcy's pretty sure Agent Hill only looks out the window to avoid Jane's hopeful look because they're under the Hudson River and the only view is fluorescent lights and white tiles.

"That's classified."

* * *

Thor is not in New York.

Actually, Darcy wants to amend that statement.

Thor is not in this plane of existence.

Is that too dramatic? Probably. But Jane's face, her carefully blank face when they tell her that Thor has left the realm kind of made her heart clench. And if the Dread Pirate Roberts ("Director Fury," Agent Hill introduced) wasn't there to simultaneously glare and look pensive _with his one eye_, Darcy would have placed Jane in the safe bosom of her…bosoms. Or something. Either way, Jane is devastated and Darcy is sad and New York is fucked up and no one will tell them anything about anything.

They're shuffled into an apartment that is slightly better than Norwegian university housing but ten time creepier in the same way that hospital rooms are creepy. It was all too non-descript. If it was possible for an apartment to say, "Move along, nothing to see here," their place pretty much screamed it. Their equipment is still somewhere over the Atlantic so there wasn't much to distract Jane with. Neither of them are really sleepy considering they pretty much slept throughout the whole flight from Oslo to Newark and Jane had worked herself to a tizzy the moments when they were awake. All that adrenaline that could have been used for a different kind of Asgard-on-Midgard action was now being redirected to being forlorn and maudlin. It was a lot of adrenaline, like pre-midterms adrenaline. Which meant that only one thing could get rid of it: getting-your-grades-back stress relief.

Darcy drapes her arm on Jane's shoulder and asks, "Have you ever played Despair?"

Jane doesn't even answer, but Darcy plows on, "You should ask me how to win Despair."

Jane sighs, "How do you win-"

Darcy interrupts her with a flourish of her other arm, "You win the game of Despair by being the first to get your stomach pumped."

She pauses, "Or by being the first one to pass out. Whichever. Sophomore year was hard."

Which was true. It was the year that Darcy and her high school boyfriend decided that shit really wasn't working. It was also the year she had to switch majors because halfway through her History requirements, Darcy kind of realized she hated every single professor in the department and switched to Political Science. Her parents were still clinging to the hope that she'll come to her senses and do something sensible like Accounting or Econ. She got through the year with empty promises of law school. Junior year was a little bit better if just because her classes were enjoyable and the poli-sci department was apparently were they hid all the hot TA's Darcy was promised.

And then she kind of sort of ran away to New Mexico. But, hey, she got a government job from it!

Darcy hauls Jane into the kitchenette and makes her sit on one of the chairs around the table. Jane looks like she just wants to go boneless on the spot but before she can drop her head onto the table, Darcy squeezes her shoulder and says, "Listen, I am going to procure enough alcohol to make this place look like a frat house, okay? Then, we are going to drink until you can't feel feelings anymore. But first, I need you to not melt into a puddle of sadness. Because I only funnel drinks into people who are conscious and willing."

Jane makes an undistinguishable noise. Darcy squeezes her shoulder again and maneuvers out of the tiny area and towards the door. Before she reaches it, three heavy knocks echo from the other side then the door swings open, almost clipping her in the face.

She takes a step back so she can give their visitor, a red head in a leather jacket and a familiar catsuit who manages to look both deadly and innocuous, a look, "So, this is awkward, because I totally remember locking the shit out of that door."

There's a small twitch under the woman's left eye like she wanted to smile but it's gone before Darcy can confirm anything. She reaches in her jacket pocket and for a second Darcy wants to recoil and duck for cover, but instead of a grenade, there's a folded manila folder all up in her face and she doesn't know what to do with it.

The woman shakes the folder at Darcy's face when she didn't grab it after a minute, "Most people take what's handed to them." Darcy swears she sees another twitch and hears a sighed, "_Most_."

Darcy makes with the grabbing and starts to apologize but the woman is already sweeping, sweeping, away in a blur of red hair. She knows that outfit. Last time she saw that outfit her security clearance skyrocketed from nil to something.

"Hey!"

The woman is practically at the end of the hallway but she turns around anyway. Then, Darcy doesn't even remember why she called out. It's not like she's looking for a confrontation. She knows her limits and it ends way before alien-ass-kicking women. Her face must have been pitiful or something because then the woman is talking.

"We would have gotten that to you earlier," she nods at the folder still hanging from Darcy's hand, "but it needed to be catalogued and documented. Send Dr. Foster our apologies."

Then she disappears into the elevator and Darcy is left alone in the hallway, alcohol procurement adventures forgotten.

She's still standing there with the blank manila folder when Jane sticks her head out of their doorway. She looks at Darcy questioningly, "Were you talking to somebody?"

Darcy turns to her and waves the folder at Jane's face, "I think I just got handed Secret Shit by a lady that can kill me with shoelaces."

Jane makes that incredulous face she makes when Darcy tries to make her drink her intricate mix of Slurpee flavors. She grabs the folder from Darcy's hands and ushers her back into the apartment.

"Weren't you promising alcohol?"

Darcy sputters, "Yeah, but then I got sidetracked by the hot-ass death-dealer with a letter for you."

Jane looks down at the creased folder in her hands while they both threw themselves at the couch, which groaned from the impact of their bodies. Darcy's about to go reprimand it for commenting on their weight when Jane suddenly has a death grip on her left kneecap.

"Oh, my God."

Darcy's still trying to pry Jane's tiny hands of death from her knee, saying, "Fucking A, _oh my God._ Jesus, you have the grip of kung fu master or something. Jane, you're grinding my knee caps into powder!"

Jane loosens her fingers and Darcy glares at her but then a piece of paper is between them, Jane all but wiping it on Darcy's face, "It's a letter! From Thor!"

Darcy grabs the offending piece of paper and looks it over. It looked like something that belonged in the Viking heritage section of a museum.

She turns it over, in what may or may not be the right side up, "How can you even tell. This is, like, in runes."

"Yeah, that's why there's a translated copy here," further paper shaking in Darcy's face.

By the time she gets over the fact that people seemed to think she needed things pushed to her face to accept its existence, Jane is already engrossed in the letter.

After a few minutes of watching Jane memorize every line of the letter, Darcy's head started to loll back onto the couch. It's not that she's bored by Jane's happiness, it's just that she's just bored. And she might be rocking a nice little adrenaline rush after staring at the hottest incarnation of death. She needed to do something.

Celebrations still needed alcohol, didn't they?

She comes back from the liquor store that was basically three steps from the safe house (which, you'd think a government safe house would be somewhere less… shady, but, well, it's not) with a box of alcohol, a box given to her by the old Korean man at the register out of pity that the customary paper bag would rip under the sheer weight of the bottles. Jane is on the couch and there's a very distinctive sound of science happening, meaning there's a thunderous (ha, jokes) tapping on a keyboard with brief pauses for the sound of a pen scratching at a piece of paper.

Darcy approaches with caution.

"Hey, bosslady. What's up with the science?"

Jane turns to her from the couch, looking maniacal with her hair trapped between two pencils and the laptop screen illuminating her face from below, she grins, "It was in the notes! Thor – I mean, of course he didn't just leave! Oh my god, Darcy! Darcy! This is just beautiful!"

And then she's hugging her notes and Darcy's starting to get the idea that there was something sexier than sweet nothings and the Asgardian equivalent of sexting in the letter Thor left, like, trans-dimensional travel sexy. She's about to say so to Jane but the other woman is already back to working.

"I gotta say, this is probably the most complicated booty call in the history of booty calls."

Jane looks scandalized. "Well, I mean, also, yes. But I really hope you understand that I find the wormhole way sexier than Thor."

Darcy sighs, "The sad thing is, I really do."

Four days later their equipment is all ready and set up in one of the few buildings in Manhattan that wasn't completely decimated by armored whale aliens. Which is pretty impressive considering it was in Midtown with a nice, un-destructed view of the Chrysler Building. Darcy thinks back to the footage of Grand Central Station in ruins and wants to weep a little.

The windows stretch from the ceiling to the floor, reminding Darcy of their little hub in New Mexico. She's pressing, squishing really, her nose against the glass, trying to give herself vertigo, muttering, "Cool. Cool, cool, cool," when Jane makes a huffy noise because highly trained government spies (assassins) aren't handling her equipment delicately enough. She has enough sense of self-preservation to pull Jane away from her watchdog duty and forces her forehead against the cool glass to look down Midtown.

In two minutes, she has Jane grinning along with her and then she nudges Darcy with her ridiculously pointy elbows, "So, this is kind of more impressive than our last place, huh?"

Darcy presses her nose harder against the glass.

* * *

Darcy gets a desk, but it's right under the air conditioner so she always needs a sweater and her boiling coffee turns into a cool, refreshing beverage in an inexplicably short amount of time. Nothing much has changed, apart from location. She still wrangles Jane into eating and sleeping and other general human necessities. She still hasn't broken the two million mark on Temple Run. She still types out a status on facebook before she realizes that pressing enter might be treason. She still stares hard at the offline icon next to Erik's name on skype. She still skirts around promises of law school with her parents. She's still just doing the Darcy thing.

Which doesn't mean SHIELD hasn't tried to mess with the Jane and Darcy Train of Tranquility.

Someone gets the bright idea of sending Jane assistants to help her science it up because apparently Darcy's just been chopped kidneys or liver or something. She was highly offended when two randos in a lab coat came barging in, declaring themselves Jane's assistant two days after they get settled into the lab. She was highly amused when they requested transfers after Jane started kicking and punching air when she couldn't translate magic into science. And it's not that Jane's a bad team player, she's just always kind of Lone Ranger-ed things for most of her career that she doesn't know how to work with people not already on her level of understanding. Sure she's had Erik and Darcy, but the only way Erik understood half the shit she spews is because he's been there from the start.

After the fourth assistant requested (demanded) a transfer to another lab, mumbling, "I'd rather be with Banner than this," on his way out, Tony Stark barges into their lab in an AC/DC shirt that looks older than Darcy. He looks around the mostly deserted lab with only Darcy in her arctic corner and Jane buried behind a literal mountain of printouts and a rolling white board.

He slips his sunglasses (they're indoors and it's been three hours since dusk) off and onto he neck of his shirt. He hasn't spotted either her or Jane since he's still squinting so Darcy takes pity on him and clears her throat. He whips around to her direction with his finger pointing accusingly, "You!"

Darcy looks around because there has to be someone else in the room that offended the billionaire with access to weapons that can decimate the entirety of the state of Rhode Island. She replies eloquently, "Um?"

Stark looms closer, well he tries to, but he's not exactly of Thor height so he just kind of stalks over, and with his finger still pointed he says, "You are the reason why I've been getting an influx of interns! Every. Other. Day. There's a lost lab coat knocking around my lab because you displaced them and because apparently Fury has a sick sense of humor!"

His arm is still extended even though there's only a lab table between them now but apparently being Iron Man means having arms of iron because, wow, Darcy can barely keep her arms up after Wii Tennis. He's still ranting when Darcy manages to rip her eyes away from his arm.

"… I didn't need assistants when I was six and I don't need them now." He pauses and then looks at her desperately, whispering, "They keep coming in and trying to _help_. And they keep wanting to _talk_ and be _mentored_. And they're touching my _stuff_."

Darcy doesn't know if handling billionaires having an emotional break because other people are touching his stuff is the same as handling scientists having a conniption because other people are touching her stuff, but she's willing to give it a try.

"Listen, _dude_," she glares at him as he scoffs but presses on, "just give them something to play with. I mean can't you give them some project that's so stupid it actually offends their Ivy League education? Because that's what we've been doing. Well that and suggesting breaking the space-time continuum with magic, but I think we have that brand of impossible copyrighted so, basically, you know. Tough shit."

She twists her ergonomic chair a bit, surveying her domain and what not, deciding not to steeple her fingers under her chin because, well, that might be over kill. Stark kind of pulls back to stare at her through squinted eyes. Darcy raises a brow and guesses nobody ever told Tony Stark 'tough shit' regarding any subject, but well, inter-dimensional travel was Jane's deal and not even Iron Man is going to fuck that up by dumping doubting lab assistants on them again. Because honestly, they questioned Jane's sanity more than her equations and that is not cool.

Stark leans back in a bit and gives her a once over, only flitting for a second over her chest. He puts his elbow on the lab table and drops his chin on his hand and asks, "What kind of magic?"

Darcy grins, "The science-y kind."

Now both his elbows are on the table, his chin rested between his palms. He searches her face, looking for any trace of lies (which is bullshit, because even if she was lying, well, let's just say poker was roughly 40% of her income Junior year). Apparently finding none, he leans forward a bit more and says, "_Really_. Care to expand on that?"

Darcy turns her chair to the right and takes one of crumpled pieces of paper she's been using to get Jane's attention and tosses it over the mountain of science journals and shouts, "Yo, Jane, I got a nerd for you!"

She swirls back to Stark who looks both offended and amused. "So," she points at his glowing chest, "is it weird to have sex with a nightlight or."


	2. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer**: I own nothing.

First off, thanks to the peeps who reviewed and followed and favorited! While you were making awesome decisions by being kind, kind people, I made the fantastic mistake of starting this when classes are about to start so, expect not so regular updates. Also, expect chapters waaayy shorter than the first one, because like I said, this was suppose to be a one shot, slice of life thang that got severely out of hand.

* * *

As it turns out the building they're in is owned by Stark, one of his more subtle buys considering his name isn't plastered on the side of it. Since the actual Stark Towers was largely under construction, they relocated and Jane and Darcy were lucky enough to snag what apparently was hot commodity in the SHIELD R&D department.

"So," Tony says around a pizza slice, dripping oil on the latest issue of a science journal that Jane reads for fun, "that's probably why you're getting all these lab monkeys. They were supposed to be relocated to the Tower but since that's not done yet, we had to stuff 'em here. Ten floors worth of scientists cramped into four, it's a mess."

Darcy eyes the amount of delicate machinery surrounding him and his food and asks, "Should you be eating here?"

Tony waves her off with his free hand and says accusingly, "You eat here."

Jane snatches the journal from under his plate, an oil blot settling into the pages, and wipes furiously at it with a paper towel, "That was before you moved in with all your stupid equipment and cluttered the place."

"Madame, my equipment has been called many things, but stupid has never been one of them."

Darcy snorts into her bite of pizza and chokes a little bit, coughing into her forearm while nobody even tried to pat her back. Jane glares at her like she's a traitor when she should be more concerned about the fact that she was choking. Darcy glares back and waves an untouched slice at her face, "You haven't eaten in like, six hours."

Jane takes the slice and Darcy considers it an acceptance of the olive branch from Stark and her. Jane even sits in the lab table Tony declared his a day ago after Jane showed him the impossible instructions Thor left her on how to open the Bifrost. In that time, Tony migrated into their lab, bringing with him fancy touch screen computers and looking at their RadioShack-scavenged machinery with mistrust like his equipment could catch out-datedness from it.

They eat in relative silence for a few minutes, each angling for another slice around another. Then a timid knock sounds from the swinging doors, with a man half way into the doorway and looking like he already regrets every action that led him to his current position.

"Tony?"

Tony gets a giddy look that Darcy's starting to recognize as dangerous and suddenly she feels for the stranger and his regrets over finding Tony. He twists in his swirly chair, almost knocking over the pizza box and several pieces of machinery. He exclaims, "Bruce!"

Tony gets up, pushing his chair further into the lab table and stabbing Jane with the corner of the pizza box. He crosses the distance to the door with, what can be classified as, a spring in his step. He drapes his arm around the other man who is looking like he'd rather take buckshot to the face than deal with Tony in front of other people.

They start towards Darcy and Jane, the other man explaining to Tony, "Pepper said you weren't answering your phone and something about a meeting? That you're either late for or missed complete."

Tony's grinning, saying, "Let's hope the latter. Anyway, Bruce Banner! Dr. Jane Foster! And Darcy Lewis! Culver Cocks, all of you! You should hold a reunion!"

Darcy definitely chokes on her soda, feeling the burn up her nose, before she manages to cough until her throat is raw. She says, wheezing, "We were not the Culver Cocks. There are _no_ Culver Cocks. Why are you making things up?"

Dr. Banner looks as distressed as her and smiles a little tightly, "Yeah, I don't…uh, I don't think they'd appreciate me coming back on university property."

"Wait," Jane says, pausing from wiping oil off of her science journal and actually looks up, "Dr. Bruce Banner? Gamma rays, Dr. Bruce Banner?"

Dr. Banner tenses and, Darcy surprisingly notes, so does Tony. "Uh."

Jane plows on, squinting at him, "From Culver, right? You did research work there?"

Both men remained silent, eyes shifting from one another. Jane smacks her journal on the table with twack and points it at Dr. Banner, "Yes! You did! Oh my god, Erik's talked about you! I've read your paper on excessive gamma radiation from solar flares!"

Tony grins, whatever coiled up tension in his shoulder gone, but Dr. Banner is still looking a little apprehensive but seemed to be working through it. Jane is still waxing poetic about something Dr. Banner wrote apparently eons ago when a realization seems to hit him, "You don't mean Erik Selvig do you?"

Jane's eyes flashes with even more joy and looks like she's about to hyperventilate so Darcy takes the reigns of the conversations, saying, "Yeah, man. Erik's our dudebro! Though since he joined up with your shady organization, we barely see him."

Jane nods at Darcy, "I – yeah, you know what, he hasn't called or anything in a while." She turns to Dr. Banner, "Would you happen to have seen him? I mean obviously you know each other. But I guess this place is kind of gigantic so, it's, it'd make sense if you haven't."

Both men looked at each other warily, the looks gone in a flash.

Jane's already moved one, but Darcy catches it and she can't help her head moving forward in interest. She puts a hand of Jane's arm who pauses at her touch. She tries to be diplomatic, "Woah, hey, hold up. There was some secret conversation happening all up in your faces. Is something wrong? Is Erik all right?"

"That's classified."

Suddenly, a wild assassin appears!

Darcy tries to hold composure. It was ineffective.

The redhead who delivered Thor's letter is leaning on a lab table near the door, looking for all the world like she's been there since before even Jane got in the lab.

Tony makes a sound of exasperation, "How are you even in here? This is Stark property, i.e. _private_ property. Also, I've upgraded security to the point of paranoia. How do you keep breaking in, is what I'm asking and how do I stop it in the future? Do I have to build an actual fire wall? A wall made of flames?"

Her face is still terrifyingly blank but her voice is that of a bewildered PA. "I'm not sure what you mean, Mr. Stark," her finger taps on a piece of plastic hanging from a lanyard. It declares her NATALIE RUSHMAN under a large Stark Industries logo. "Every Stark Industries employee is granted access to buildings relevant to our work. How else can we further this great company if not to work relentlessly like our great, fearless leader."

"I'm pretty sure I fired you in a donut shop."

"I'm pretty sure that's still not up to you." She pushes off the lab table and walks towards them. "Directory Fury was contacted by Miss Potts asking him to tell you that, if you fail to appear at the rescheduled meeting in two hours, you're going to get ousted by your Board of Directors. Again."

He groans and makes an intricate movement with his hands, dismissing the message. "What is the point of holding the majority of the interests if I can't skip a couple meetings," he turns to the other three, "am I right or am I right?"

Banner only shakes his head and shrugs as if to say, _Sorry, only here for the science_.

Jane waves off their banter with a hand then points a folded piece of pizza at Natalie Rushman. "What do you mean classified? You can't just make a person classified. That's, that's unconstitutional or illegal or something. _Classified_. And I was promised access to information pertinent to my research and I can pretty much guarantee you that Erik is very much pertinent."

Darcy wants to burrow deep into the caverns of her mind and hide, maybe spruce the place up, it'll be regular Bat Cave by the time she's done, because apparently, Jane didn't get the memo on threatening assassins. It was fairly short. One word: DON'T.

Bruce and Tony seemed to have gotten the memo though because they stepped back from the blast radius of whatever was about to be unleashed, either by Jane or the redhead. Darcy stayed beside Jane because she was a good friend and _oh my God why did she have to be a good friend?_

The woman takes a step towards them and Darcy's life basically flashes before her eyes and she remembers every single gold fish she's ever killed. Jane is still waving her floppy piece of pizza around, complaining about the US legal system and how Erik's been a US citizen for like, two decades now, and if this was some sort of xenophobic, bureaucratic bullshit, she would like to remind The Man that Culver University is a public research institution, one where Erik has provided important contributions to!

By the time she's done with her rant, Darcy is white-knuckling the edge of her chair, Stark has specks of oil on his face from Jane's increasingly air-borne pizza, Dr. Banner looks like he could teach a lamaze class, and the other woman is standing patiently by their lab table, with an air of patience and politeness that can only be learned from dealing with science-types who regularly went on tandems. Through out the whole thing, she has the poker face that Lady Gaga was probably talking about. But now she was in front of them and Darcy thinks it sucks that the first time she's gonna meet Jane's parents is at her funeral. It's not that she looks mad or offended that Jane's accusing SHIELD, and by extension her, of kidnapping and other acts possibly considered as criminal by several law enforcement agencies, it's that she's looking _calculating_. She trying to figure out what to do and Darcy really hopes it doesn't rhyme with shmovernment shmanctioned shmurder.

She drums her fingers on the black top of the table, the sound, muted since her nails are blunt. She hums a bit to herself and then nods, "If you wait three business days you and Miss Lewis will be cleared to see him. Otherwise, Dr. Selvig and his whereabouts are still a matter of national security."

Jane looks placated if a little put out. She's silent for a few seconds, chewing her food thoughtfully if not a bit aggressively. She presses the heel of her hand with no pizza oil on it to the corner of her eyes and sighs, "Fine. Just, I need to know he's fine, alright? Can you tell me that, at least? Please? I can't have him being, you know," she laughs nervously, "Gitmo'd or whatever. I mean, when I say pertinent to my research, I mean, if he didn't help me for as long as he has, I wouldn't _have_ this research."

Darcy wants to hug Jane but she still has her pizza in her hand and it seems Jane's sad face has the same effect on any person, whether or not they had a license to kill, because the other woman's face softens _just_ a touch. "Hypothetically, if Selvig was… compromised, and if I were to evaluate his physical and mental state, I would, hypothetically, say that he is… going to be fine."

Jane looks crestfallen at the thought of Erik being hurt at any point of time, hypothetically or not. She's mindlessly tearing a paper napkin into her pizza slice and says, "Oh."

Darcy bites her lip, her concern for Erik and Jane overpowering her fight or flight instincts that the red head seemed to bring up, "Erik was hurt then? During the whole," she makes a grand gesture with her hand, pointing out to Manhattan, "_Independence Day _thing? I mean. You know. In that hypothetical situation."

The woman moves her left shoulder an increment, a shrug, "A lot of people were hurt during the attack. Theoretically, Erik Selvig may have been one of them. Though his proximity to SHIELD might suggest that his injuries may be more than a scrapped knee. Who knows." She moves both of her shoulders this time and turns her hands palms up, "Well, you two certainly don't, at least not for another three days."

She gives Banner and Stark a hard look, a warning and a promise of severe consequences. Bruce snorts a little bit and Stark grins a lot, the actions not as relaxed as they'd like to pretend.

"Can't you, I dunno, expedite it somehow? I mean, Jane is gonna open a wormhole for you guys!"

"Miss Lewis, I can make many things operate more efficiently, but paper work will never be one of them."

She smiles a little bit like she likes Jane and Darcy's moxie (if people still had that) or whatever and extends her hand across the table, "Agent Romanoff, it's nice to be officially introduced."

Darcy reaches for her first because Jane is still a little bit of a daze and they share a strong, firm handshake. Ernest Hemingway would have approved of it.

Darcy nudges Jane out of her daze and lets out an "Oh!" then wipes her crumb encrusted hand on a paper napkin she hasn't decimated and shakes enthusiastically, thanking Agent Romanoff for the (entirely hypothetical) information.

She gives them another small smile then snaps towards Stark, all but dragging him towards the door, "I don't appreciate being used as a courier for misguided billionaires."

Stark still looks bewildered at the interaction, but apparently resigned over being dragged to places by redheads. "What was that about?"

They're almost out of earshot but Darcy maybe, kind of, edged closer to the door, under the guise of waving back goodbye to Dr. Banner and she hears Agent Romanoff saying, "I have a soft spot for mentors."

* * *

Two business days and one business hour later, Darcy is an hour earlier than usual to the lab and is trying to remember the key code to the bathroom on their floor because Jane managed to slip past her and stayed overnight, when Deputy Director Maria Hill (yeah, Darcy checked their servers out, or what she could see, though Tony's offered to jailbreak her computer so she can see _everything,_ to which she politely declined) opens the outer doors to the bathroom, almost clipping her in the face. The woman kind of sighs at the sight of her and Darcy would be cranky too if she had to basically strip just to pee so she tries not to take it too personally.

Darcy puts on her stern face, "Deputy Director Hill."

Hill just looks at her harder. "Who have you been talking to?"

Darcy blanches, "Uh, I'm sorry. I didn't realize your rank was like. Super Secret Information."

"It's not. I'm just curious how your and Dr. Foster's clearance jumped a few pay grades six hours earlier than scheduled."

"It… did?"

Hill arches a brow.

It's like that time when her Lit professor accused her of plagiarizing when she didn't and suddenly she's wondering. Oh God, did she? What counts as plagiarizing? Is sparknotes going to be her downfall? And suddenly she starts confessing things. "Oh my God, I swear I said no when Tony offered to 'upgrade' my computer. Did you know he has an AI? Because it is all over the lab now. Oh God, was _that_ illegal? Also I took a ream of printing paper because Jane used up every piece of paper in our apartment. I can't even order take out anymore since all of the flyers have been scribbled over with science. Oh God, did I manage to commit treason? Have I betrayed the stars and stripes? Freedom, justice and the American way?"

Hill tilts her head up a bit to accentuate her further arched brow.

Whatever. She can be sassy when bladder was full. Not even the government can take that away.

"On behalf of the US government, I think I can confidently say that you can keep it." Dammit. Her internal monologue was getting ahead of her.

"It really is." Unless Hill can read minds?

"I can't." Yet?

"No."

They have the mildest Mexican stand-off ever, all unfocused staring (from Darcy) and complete utter apathy (Hill). Then Hill cracks her neck and not in the 'Ooh let me just loosen up' kind of way but more like 'Dear God, are heads suppose to turn on that angle without being possessed by Satan?'

Hill then pulls out two plastic cards from one her many pockets (cargo catsuits, who knew) with Jane and Darcy's faces on them, "The request for access to Selvig and Project PEGASUS has been granted _six hours early_ for you and Dr. Foster. These are your IDs. Keep this around your neck at all times. No cute little clip-on ID holders, strictly lanyards. Should you lose this, you are to report it immediately. You are to surrender your temporary key cards to the front desk before the end of the business. HR works _mostly_ normal hours so that's latest 1700 hours and that's pushing it."

Darcy just nods kind of in awe, because, look! Proof she works for the government! Where she has clearance to _things_. Things with super secret codenames. Her cousins never even trusted her with the password to the tree house in _her_ backyard. She reaches for the cards only to have Hill pull it back a centimeter from her reach.

"Why Donald Blake?"

"I dunno, I asked Jane the same thing. I mean the dude was basically Dr. Abercrombie and Fitch but, wow, no amount of crunches can make you forget the pure, utter douchiness of that guy."

Hill looks like she's regretting trusting Darcy with national secrets, _which she should_, but for different reasons other than answering her weird questions.

"Don? Dr. Blake? He-who-broke-up-with-Jane because, and this is super simplified but fuck him, he thought New Mexico was boring. And then he up and ran back to New York because, you know. If you can't take the heat… stay out… of the desert? Ha ha, ha ha, ha?"

Hill is still looking doubtful at her sanity and Darcy still has to pee so she asks, "Why do I feel like we're not talking about the same thing?"

"The extremely illegal fake ID your people provided SHIELD when Thor was in our custody. He was listed as Dr. Donald Blake."

And stuff starts making sense, "Oh! The douchebag forgot his license and it was easier to use it as a base for the, um. Illegal. ID. Which is what I would say if I knew how to produce such illegal goods. Ma'am."

"That's a shame, it was a pretty good facsimile," she taps her fingers on the cards and all but tosses it to Darcy, "SHIELD is a connoisseur of fine illegal goods and their purveyors."

"Um."

"Have a good day, Miss Lewis."

Agent Hill proceeds down the hall, takes a sharp left, then Darcy is alone in the hallway, standing in front of the bathroom.

And she still couldn't remember the stupid code.

* * *

Quick note: in my head, the 'mentor' line from Natasha can be seen as either referring to Coulson or Ivan Petrovitch who was a father-figure/mentor type to her in the comics, or he was in Deadly Origins. Both did not end well.


	3. Chapter 3

**Disclaimer**: I own nothing.

Guys. University is hard. Just run away and join the circus. And you're like, Margaret (have I mentioned I'm Margaret? I'm Margaret) that sounds like terrible advice. IT IS. DON'T FOLLOW IT. I HAD NERDS FOR DINNER LAST NIGHT. I'M NOT TO BE TRUSTED WITH LIFE CHOICES.

But, really, I'm sorry for the month long furlong. I've been writing this on and off for the past month and these are the meager fruits of my efforts.

* * *

They don't see Erik that day. Instead they're briefed on why they haven't and can't see Erik. From the scepter to the mind-control and to the opening of his mind's eye, Jane and Darcy get's a pretty clear picture of the shit storm Erik's been through.

"Along with every other SHIELD personnel that was affected by Loki's scepter, Dr. Selvig is being held under observation until it becomes clear that there are no latent effects of the Tesseract's influence."

_Observation her ass_, Darcy can pretty much guess what that meant and Jane's pretty much on the same train because then they're talking over each other.

"You can't just lock him up and pray the mind control scars away and hopes he gets over it!"

"Do you really think keeping him from his friends is gonna help? And since when did you become experts on recovery from _having your minds invaded by an alien being_?"

"We're helping him through his recovery as best as we can-"

Jane stares the man down. Agent Romanoff waves him away and he gratefully exits, leaving the three women alone in the impressive conference room.

"Dr. Foster," she starts but Jane just glares harder.

"You said he was fine!"

"No," she said calmly, "I said he was getting better."

Jane kind of deflates and mumbles, "Even prisoners get visitors."

"Dr. Selvig isn't under arrest," Agent Romanoff sighs a little bit though her posture doesn't indicate any wariness. "He wasn't the only one forced into helping Loki. Every single one of them has had their mind made into a plaything, directed by someone else's whims. Believe me when I say, they need time to recover, to gather themselves back up again. And we gave him the space to do that."

Romanoff stands up, "He's been informed of your presence and when he's ready, he'll see you. Until then, all you can do is wait."

* * *

Jane's a little mopey after the meeting, half-heartedly revising equations on her white board which only looks sadder next to Stark's fancy touch screen monitors littering the lab. Darcy's never really seen Jane like this, since she usually finds science as a fine substitute for emotions when things turn to shit.

Even Tony's minding his own business, only giving Jane's shoulder a tight squeeze and mumbling an apology then shuffling to his corner of the lab, hidden by precariously stacked pieces of machinery. His usual stream of conversation with JARVIS is reduced to requests for files and locations of machinery.

Jane sits in her chair, lethargically swinging it side to side while Darcy pretends not to be creeping on her by hiding behind her computer screen. She doesn't know what to say because, well, they don't exactly have any proverbs about having your father-figure mind controlled by an alien god do they? Maybe Hallmark will start a line after the almost-invasion.

Jane sighs and stands from her chair and grabs her bag and says, "I'm gonna go get something to eat."

Darcy perks up, food, food she can do, "Sure, you want me to call for take out or-"

Jane gives her a weak smile and waves her off, "No, no, it's cool. I'm just gonna grab a bagel across the street."

She starts gathering her things into her bag and Darcy and Tony share a look. Jane leaving the lab to eat when the sun was still out. It's like the Twilight Zone's Twilight Zone.

"Oh, um, do you want me to come?" She's reaching for her bag when Jane shakes her head.

"Nah, I'm just gonna. Get some fresh air? Feel the sun? I don't know, what do people usually do during times of stress?"

"I built a metal suit out of missile scraps."

Darcy gives Tony an incredulous look, "Yeah, I think air might be good. Just, answer your phone because I can't promise not to call on an AMBER Alert if all I get is complete radio silence, okay?"

Jane's smile widens a bit and she comes over to Darcy's chair and hugs her tight, surprising Darcy and pulling an, "Oh!" from her before she wraps her arms around the other woman.

Jane tucks her chin on top of Darcy's shoulders and sighs. Then, she says, warmly, "AMBER Alert is for children."

* * *

Facebook officially lost its allure. Which should be impossible because Darcy's still facebook friends with a lot of people from high school who were pushing the boundaries of Super Senior into Van Wilder status. Long story short, a lot of questionable decisions are made and a lot of them were chronicled by a brave sober soul who tagged appropriately.

She clicks out of Sarah Menke's sorority's Pimp$ 'n' Hoe$ album after seeing the same keg stand picture for the third time and sighs. It's been two hours since Jane left and she was both worried and bored.

She knows Jane's on roof because JARVIS checked fifteen minutes ago (which Tony declared Not Even At All Creepy because, "If that's creepy then that would mean _I'm_ creepy and my title of billionaire, philanthropist, playboy is full enough as it is without going all Howard Hughes on everybody. I just like knowing where my people are. I don't like losing them- I mean, track of them. Shut up. Your hair is stupid.")

Whatever. Darcy is, technically, a lab assistant. Since she's in a lab, half of her work is done right there, now all she had to do was assist.

She pushes hard against her table, propelling her chair towards Tony's little area. She misses him by about four tables so she grapples her way next to his. He only gives her a small glance to make sure she's not touching anything essential.

She puts her elbows on the top of some blue prints and rests her chin on her hands and asks, "So. What's up with you?"

"Nope," Stark said, popping the last syllable, steadily ignoring her.

Darcy presses her chin harder on her hands and tilts her head to the left. She bats her lashes. "What ever do you mean, Mr. Stark?"

"This," he waves at her general direction, "is not happening. We are not talking about our feelings, you are not touching my stuff, there will be no braiding of any sort, friendship bracelets or otherwise. Which are flammable anyway, so. Nope."

"Ugh, _your face _is flammable."

Tony sighs forlornly, "It really is."

"Mr. Stark, you, sir, are being boring. JARVIS thinks so too, right?"

The voice streams out of Tony's computer's speakers, "There _has_ been a significant decrease in laboratory related accidents recently, sir."

Darcy smiles brilliantly and points at his computer, "Oh, hell yes! JARVIS if you had a hand, I'd be high-fiving it right now."

Tony's response was to swivel a degree to the left, effectively cutting her out of his line of sight. He says slowly, enunciating, "I am a busy man being busy."

Darcy's feet scrambles, moving her chair and herself back in front of Tony, "And I'm a lab assistant. We're in a lab, you're a scientist, lemme assist. I promise I won't blow stuff up. And I'm super good at finding patterns! And tasing things! Did I tell you about the time I tased Thor? Fun times. What are you even working on?"

"An arrow. Go away."

Darcy squints at the thing in front of Tony, "That…looks like a Keurig. With an arc reactor in it. Do you need a sidekick or something? Because I'd go for a Roomba if you were looking in the household appliance department. I mean, just stick a knife on it and, wham! Murder by Roomba. And then it'll even help in the clean up! It's perfect!"

Tony looks perplexed that he had a Keurig on his lab table, "I swear this was an arrow three hours ago. JARVIS, why am I making this and what the hell happened to Barton's arrow?"

"I believe you declared a need for a machine that brewed coffee indefinitely. As for Agent Barton's arrow, you tossed it in Dr. Foster's side of the laboratory, declaring it as medieval as her equipment an hour ago, sir."

"What. Ever. Our medieval equipment found an alien god, so you can suck it, Stark."

Tony scoffs and continued tinkering with the coffee machine, "Please. I've read the reports. You people were just in the right place at the right time. Your equipment did jack shit."

Darcy puts on the face she used when she was camp counselor and the children were being particularly belligerent, serene and patronizing "Just because we found an alien and you didn't doesn't mean you have to be jealous, Tony. Everybody's got their strengths and I guess finding new life forms just isn't yours."

"_Excuse me_, I'm pretty sure I'm the only person in this planet that can say I successfully nuked and neutralized an alien warship."

"And we're all _super_ proud of you," she all but coos, reaching over the desk and patting his head, flattening the mad scientist 'do he had going on. Tony looks violated and contemplating to sue for emotional damage.

She's going for a cheek pinch when she hears the sound of someone regretting their existence and the poor choices they've made thus far.

Darcy spins her chair to the appropriate direction. "Dr. Banner! You should tell our poor boy Anthony that he shouldn't feel any less proud of himself just because Jane's dime-store equipment detected new life form and his hasn't."

"I synthesized a new element! Every single science lab has to get new prints of the periodic tables of elements because of me! I basically jump started the periodic table printing industry!"

Dr. Banner looks slightly amused and holds up a stack of papers held together by those giant binder clips that look like they can rip someone's face off, "I have something Dr. Foster might find useful. It's, uh, it's kinda specific to gamma radiation and we were talking about it earlier, so I thought I'd just leave this … here. I'm sorry, did I say something?"

And Darcy's face must have been particularly pathetic if she managed to derail Dr. Banner, Dr. Zen and Focus Because If Not, Green Things Happen (true story, the code to the copy machine took a higher level of clearance than finding that particular fact out. Tony helped. Well, she says helped, she really means blabbed. Well, she really, really means jailbroke her computer when she wasn't looking. To be fair, she read everybody's files, well tried to read through the black outs. Dr. Banner's was the only one with a video that she could access.)

Tony makes a frustrated noise behind her, "Really? I _just_ got her distracted from that."

"What? No, it's fine, I'm fine. What do you mean _distracted_? I don't need distracting. I'm like a camera I'm so focused. I'm freaking instagram over here. So I'll just take that and I'll sort it out. For Jane. Who has officially been out of the lab of her own volition for the past two hours. While I sit here. Not unlike a duck."

She sets the stack down on a desk. Her head follows it and she sighs.

"I'm lame. This is lame."

Three cold cylinders pat her shoulder softly, a whirring sound behind the action. Darcy lifts her head up and sees that one of Tony's robots has wheeled next to her, looking sympathetic even without a face. She gives it a pat back, on what she can only assume is either its elbow or its hips, "Thanks, bud."

* * *

They spend the next three days in a limbo and riding the sighing train, where Jane sighs then Darcy sighs then Tony sighs then Dr. Banner comes in to drag Tony away because he forgot about an experiment that was currently burning a hole through two feet of concrete. And then Jane and Darcy were left alone, their once stable footing lost, unsure of how to proceed with the possibility of the idea that Erik may not be returning to them.

"It's just, I knew he was busy, but I knew he was coming back, you know? And we'd Three Musketeers it up again. I know I'm being selfish, not working for the past couple days and I know it's stupid to want to eat your cake after…baking it. Buying it? Making it? I think I lost control of that metaphor."

Darcy puts her arm around Jane, the angle awkward the way they were sitting in their kitchenette table, "It's alright, French metaphors are hard."

Jane looks like she wants to argue the statement, but Darcy's already distracting her with toasted Pop Tarts and the new issue of Mad Scientists Monthly (maybe, probably not).

"Tony said he found twenty-three mistakes in this issue and that you wouldn't be able to find even twelve of them. And then he made fun of Culver. Also he said my hair was stupid. So, you should defend my honor by kicking his ass in Where's Waldo: Science Edition."

Jane spends an hour scanning each article with a red Sharpie while Darcy collated what little data that's been produced by their lab the past three days.

At the hour and a half mark, Jane puts down the Sharpie and says, quietly, "Hey, thanks. I feel like I don't say that enough, but thanks."

Darcy grins brightly, "Anytime, boss."

The rest of the week is spent in a sort of semblance of normality with Jane dipping her toes back into research-mode. She spends more than a few hours arguing with Tony about the errors in the journal and whether grammatical errors counted (Darcy and Dr. Banner votes yay because, come on. They're supposed to be geniuses.) and Darcy has to put a little bit more effort in transcribing notes and filing data, but it's still no where the amount she's used to doing.

Jane still disappears into the roof for a couple hours, sometimes the whole day, and Darcy does her best to keep occupied. She's mostly alone since Tony "I Have an Actual Lab Where I Can Do Actual Work" Stark mostly flits in and out of their lab, reclaiming his robots who likes to wander into Darcy's space and hands her things she doesn't need.

"You're like the new kid in class everybody likes just because you're new. I hope you know they're gonna get tired of you and eventually come back to my warm, oily, embrace."

When Darcy doesn't respond, Tony drags a stool next to her. "You know when I told you this wasn't creepy? Good news is, it's still not, bad news is I think you're edging on what the legal system refers to as an 'invasion of privacy' and 'stalking'."

Every time Jane vanishes into to parts supposed-to-be-unknown, Darcy obsessively checks the CCTV feed Tony 'accidentally' ("Oh, oops, is that the security feeds from the south corner of the roof. Goodness, how did that pop up.") set up for her. It's not even really her fault. She pretty much burns through whatever work Jane leaves for her in a few hours considering she's still programed to do the long haul, bulk kind of filing where she forgets the alphabet and has to sing to herself every few minutes. And it's not even like she can help with the actual work and maybe when she has really bad moments she feels like she's utterly useless and shouldn't be sitting in the big kids table. Thank God nobody sees those moments but an AI who knows how to keep a secret (she may have caused the Great Collapse of the Print-Outs of 2012 and blamed it on the bio labs, because, you know, _they're always mutating shit, Jane, what if they made something invisible. That hates paper. Yes. Definitely that_.).

Tony is still expanding on what the legal system considers to be a definite breach of security and privacy when Darcy just sighs and makes a shooing motion. "Go sculpt your soul patch and leave me and the creepy security footage of my boss alone."

His hand jumps to his chin protectively, his face scandalized. He probably gasped loudly too, but the doors swing open and Darcy is literally so bored she was hoping it was Agent Hill with more paperwork that needed filling out.

Instead it's Agent Romanoff with a man that is giving Darcy is serious case of déjà vu. She wants to throw herself to the other woman's feet and beg for something to do. They work for the government, right? Isn't there suppose to be an endless tsunami of paperwork to be done?

She's about to wave hello and declare her innocence of the whole hacking into their security cameras deal when her breath catches in her throat.

"Oh, my God."

She's pushing Tony away, almost tipping him off his stool and barrels through the super spies and apparently her sense of self-preservation and into Erik's chest.

She wraps her arms tight around his middle while he pats her back soothingly. "Jesus, we thought-"

"Darcy, I'm fine-"

"-you got sent to Gitmo or something and-"

"-really, I'm-"

"-no one was telling us anything. Jesus Christ. I mean-"

"-alright."

Darcy coughs and sniffles a little because apparently she started crying, "-we just. We didn't know if you even wanted to come back. Because, Jesus, of all the reasons not to, this is pretty high up on the fucked up list."

Erik pulls back and pats down her hair that got caught on the threads of his sweater, "I would never."

Darcy wants to cry even more but she remembers she's in public surrounded by hot people that can kill her so she deflects with manic joy instead. "Oh! Oh! Jane! We need! I'm gonna go get her! Erik, she's been taking _breaks_, Erik. It's like the weirdest and tensest relaxation method I've ever seen. And I asked Dr. Banner and he said it was weird too! I'm gonna go get her, so stay here while I run farther than I have this whole year, because, wow, there are a couple flight of stairs between me and the roof."

Tony sighs loudly, exasperated, "You have phones. This is the 21st Century. I built a source for sustainable energy and threw a nuclear bomb at an alien warship. I think you can text her that her long lost father-figure has come back."

Everybody that could fit in a leather jumpsuits (maybe sleeveless ones for Agent Forearms, Darcy checked subtly, definitely sleeveless) and Darcy glared at his direction. Erik has strayed from the conversation towards Jane's side of the lab, concentrating hard on the little squiggles that were supposed to be equations.

Agent Forearms (which, Darcy decided, is what he shall be christened until proper introductions were made) glares a little harder, "That's cold, man."

A little chime comes out of one of the speakers and Darcy guesses that it's the equivalent of a polite cough for AI computers, "I've taken the liberty to send Dr. Foster a message alerting her that her presence would be appreciated in the labs."

"Your computer has better manners than you, Soul Patch."

"What is even the difference between what I said and what he did!"

"Oh, I don't know, maybe he didn't suggest to basically send Jane 'The guy who mentored you through your biggest scientific break-throughs is back, LOL TXT IT."

Tony flips her off. Darcy feigns distress, too elated to be offended, "That, sir, is a rude gesture."

"And this, madam, is a rude dance," he says while raising his other middle finger and does a jig before he remembers there are other people in the room when Agent Forearms' phone flashes and the simulated noise of a camera's shutters clicks.

The other man is grinning and moves to show Agent Romanoff who leans back to look at the screen. Tony sniffs, all hoity-toity, "Whatever, I've been caught on camera doing worse."

Darcy's eyes flit towards Erik, still scrutinizing Jane's whiteboard closely, his nose brushing the surface every once in a while. Agent Romanoff is leaning on her lab table watching Tony and the other man bicker. He's complaining something about a quiver that constantly needs oiling when Darcy realizes why she got all déjà vu when she saw him.

She points at him accusingly, "You!"

Everybody but Erik stops what their doing and looks at her like she's crazy, which maybe she is, but not about this. "You were so totally in New Mexico! I've totally seen you at Izzy's!"

"Uh."

Agent Romanoff smirks and puts on a face of wonder, "Goodness, Agent Barton, were you spotted by one of the civilian assets you were suppose to be conducting surveillance on?"

Agent Barton née Forearms sputters while Stark laughs loudly, "Oh, my God. I think your Super Secret Spy membership just got revoked.

Agent Barton glares at him and Darcy feels kind of bad, so she tries, "Well, in his defense it was post-Destroyer Destroying Puente so jack booted thugs were abound. Besides Izzy's was, like, the only store that opened quickly and served coffee."

Agent Barton grins and joins Agent Romanoff, who is still leaning on her table. He offers his hand, "Clint Barton, Agent of SHIELD."

Darcy grasps his callous ridden hands and shakes firmly, "I'd introduce myself except I'm pretty sure you know my social security number better than I do."

"So, Darcy Lewis, resident of Paramus, New Jersey, daughter of David and Amanda Lewis, and Netflix account holder who has Downton Abbey queued, how're you liking SHIELD accommodations?"

He rests his elbows on top of the table and his chin on the crux of his intertwined fingers, he looks down right cherubic. Agent Romanoff snorts lightly and Darcy is feeling a little violated. "That was creepy."

Clint, still grinning, waves her off, "Pssh, no it wasn't."

"Oh, I'm sorry, you're right. That was _super, fucking creepy_."

Whatever Clint planned on saying is cut off by the sound of a sharp intake of breath. Jane is standing by the door and staring intently at the back of Erik's figure, still immersed by the equations.

She rushes towards him to the other side of the room and all but tackles him into the white board. Her face is all red and bunched up and she's not quite crying, her voice carrying over only pieces of their conversation, "…thought you were gonna leave…don't think I can do this…just like Dad but you wouldn't be there…"

All through this Erik murmurs comforting promises and then he holds her by her arms and looks at her, "Your father would be so proud of you."

Jane smiles brightly and wipes at the errant tears that escaped. Then Erik urges her towards her equations which Darcy hasn't seen her fiddle with for almost a week and points at very specific spots. He rubs a symbol off with his finger and then another and Jane is there filling it in with a different squiggle.

Tony drifts near them and squints at their work. He tries to point at a spot next to where Jane is writing and gets body checked for his troubles. And then he's grabbing his own marker and saying, "No, no, no, no, see. Do you _see_ it?" Jane glares at him but does look at his contributions and nods slowly.

Erik turns towards the rest of the occupants of the room and waves them over, "Agent Romanoff, Agent Barton, I think this maybe relevant to your interests."

Darcy hangs back while Barton and Romanoff listen intently as Erik explains what resources they're going to be needing to help with the progress. Barton and Romanoff interrupt occasionally, either confirming or explaining that "the US government does not have access to that, Dr. Selvig." At which Tony laughs his billionaire laugh and points to himself and says, "I privatized world peace, I guess I can privatize inter-dimensional travel too."

Darcy smiles and pats Tony's monitor, "JARVIS, I think this is the start of an amazing new era. Or the apocalypse."

Dry as a motherboard, JARVIS replies, "Indeed, Ms. Lewis."


	4. Chapter 4

**Disclaimer:** I own nothing.

Pro-tip, don't take just English classes because you will drown in books and the subsequent papers on those books. But! I muddled through and prevailed! Ish. Anyway, all the reviews warm the cold cockles of my heart. An I just realized I haven't been replying to the reviews here, and it's not because I hate you guys, it's just that, for reasons unknown, my account is linked not to my main email so I am just pleasantly surprised when I see someone post something when I check randomly here. Basically, I'm fairly sure my account predates my gmail account, or at least my transition into gmail. BUT! Know that your reviews are totes appreciated.

Anyway, oblig apology for lateness. Though at this point lateness is just the normal time now, so I guess I'm not really late. So, there you go.

* * *

Things were going. Well. Glacial. Darcy can appreciate that genius takes time (if just because Tony declared it anytime someone wearing a suit looking for answers about their progress wanders in), but. Well.

Well.

She pushes at the small puddle of water that gathered around her ice coffee and wipes her finger on a dry section of the lab table. Clint looks at her with deep, deep judgment. He gingerly pushes a roll of paper towel to her (moist) side of the table, asking, "Did they not teach you manners at Oak Ridge Elementary School?"

Darcy visibly shudders and glares at him. "I hate you."

She tears a strip of paper towel off of the roll and uses it as a makeshift coaster. "Isn't using your crazy clearance to find out factoids about my childhood, _for the pure sake of creeping me out,_ a severe abuse of power that would make your superiors very disappointed?"

Clint shrugs, "It's all very public information. Most of it. Your facebook's not as private as you think it is. Besides, you're severely underestimating the Director's sense of humor."

Darcy blanches. She tries to act cool about finding out that the man who probably has a higher clearance level than the POTUS passes creeping on people as a sense of humor. Clint notices though. Apparently they were pretty fucking literal when they were giving out codenames that day.

He nods to himself and continues on writing down notes (because he's taking notes. About the science. Admittedly it's just to keep track of the equipment that's needed or been broken, but Darcy spies the occasional formula). He's humming some nameless tune that Darcy thinks is suppose to be comforting but all she can hear is the soundtrack to her inevitable heart attack because then he says, "Yeah, the Director's pretty funny when he gets into it. One time, he sent in these new recruits to a British compound and told them it was an old KGB nest to see if they can recognize the layout, because, you know, most Soviet architecture are pretty similar and anyone can pretty much see it a mile away. Ha, yeah. The British embassy wasn't impressed."

Darcy wants to die a little bit. She says, trying to stamp down the feeling of trepidation with forced joy, "Oh man, you guys. Such a riot."

Clint's not looking at her in a very specific way so she stares harder at the side of his face.

Oh my God. "You shit!"

She punches him on the arm, jostling his writing, which has now descended into doodles of bulls-eyes and triangles. "That's not even funny, dude. That is hazardous to my health!"

She punches his arm again because now he's grinning openly. She's gearing up for a third punch when he puts his hands up in surrender. "Woah now, hey. You're making me feel uncomfortable in my workspace. I think I'm supposed to set up a meeting with HR now. At least, that's what the seminar said."

Darcy grabs the piece of paper he's been writing on to pass judgment on his artistry. The list starts normally enough, Clint's handwriting small and tight, like the extra inches on the paper cost something, but it slowly becomes squiggles that look more like eraser shavings than words. The other half of the paper is covered in arrows pointing in various directions, numbers and equations next to them. "Did you have a stroke midway through writing this or something?"

He snatches it back before she knows what's happening and starts scribbling again once Jane's and Tony's voices rise, "It's short-hand. They started talking too fast. Aren't you getting paid to do work around here?"

Darcy would be offended if she wasn't currently doing so little. She shrugs, "I'm basically the clean up crew of the one man disaster that is Dr. Jane Foster. My work comes in after she levels the place."

Jane takes offense and glares at her, "Hey!"

"Please, you'd be more offended if it wasn't true."

Jane looks like she wants to argue but Erik shuffles her over to Dr. Banner's lab table. The news of Erik's resurgence brought several people out of the woodworks, from other scientists that worked on the original PEGASUS field site (When Darcy asks about the name, Tony snorts and says derisively, "Because they wanted to fly away to other dimensions. Who knows. It should've been called Project Let's Fuck with Alien Technology Beyond Our Ken. No offense A-Ha." Erik glares at him.) to the ever elusive Bruce Banner, previously hidden in the other side of the building, nary a scientist approaching his corner. As far as Darcy saw, the feeling was mutual, with Dr. Banner doing pretty much everything but locking down his lab to keep other people away. But more often than not, he strayed into their lab, first to reminisce with Erik then to complicate Jane's equations.

"Jesus, I remember those Intro classes. And all those freshmen," Dr. Banner said during one of their lunch breaks in the lab.

Erik laughed mirthlessly, "I remember those. They were enthusiastic. At 8 in the morning. It was…painful."

Jane threw in, "At least you never had to teach an Expos Writing class. God, the things I had to do to get through grad school."

Erik snorted and gave up on his chopsticks and rummaged for a fork in the plastic take out bag, "My dear, two hundred students with only three TA's. That's a nightmare."

Bruce nodded and they all silently agreed on the terrible nature of freshmen. Darcy was enraptured by the display, it's like seeing your math teacher in Shoprite and realizing that they probably ate food and had lives. It was like being allowed to look in the Teachers Lounge. It was fascinating.

Darcy's imagining Jane sift through horrible essays when she realized, "Hey!" She points at Jane with her fork, "I was in one of your Intro classes! That's the whole reason I'm here!"

And it's true. At the end of the semester with Darcy barely scraping a B+ on General Physics, Dr. Jane Foster informed Darcy's class that there was going to be an internship that wasn't necessarily science-intensive available for six credits that will fulfill Culver University's Gen Ed requirements. All Darcy heard was six credits aka two classes worth of credits aka two classes she won't have to take in the fall aka where does she sign up.

But that was three weeks ago and by now, they've managed to coax Dr. Banner into their lab, which led to Tony pouting when he found out because, "You were _my_ science buddy! We were going to make a TARDIS! You know what. Fine. Fine, if you wanna play with these _squares_ (You heard me, Foster), go right ahead. I'm gonna open my own wormhole." He usually storms off in a huff or just scuttles to the other side of the lab and glares at the rest of the room.

Clint surveys All from his own corner of the lab, near enough to hear their squabbles for equipment but far enough not to get caught in it. Darcy stops by when the Science Masses are huddled by the ever-expanding rows of white boards, regularly scoffed at by Tony. She's taking whatever conversation that didn't involve astrophysics or crazy alphabet math except Clint is apparently down with that part of the crazy.

Darcy pulls a little at the paper Clint's writing on and points at the small diagrams littering the other half of it. "What is that?"

Clint huffs at her movement, which left whatever he was writing to become even more incomprehensible squiggles, and pulls the paper even closer to him. He drawls, "My job."

"It's your job to draw arrows?"

His grin reaches shit eating levels and says slowly, "Well. I am an archer."

Darcy stares at him blankly. And he sighs and hunches his shoulders in a way that he should have grown out of around the same time he turned 15. "Because. Draw. Like a bow."

Darcy responds, dryly, "So. Punny."

He sniffs delicately, "Sorry your plebian tastes can't handle my shit."

"You're worse than Stark," she says turning away to go toss her now extremely watered down iced coffee.

"Wow, ouch. That's offensive. Oh, fine. Come here."

He snatches the cup from her hands and shoots it over-hand into the trashcan nearest them, sinking it and not even touching the edges of the bin.

"That's disgusting," Darcy says with more than a little awe in her voice.

"That," Clint says, hands still up in the air at the release position, "is what I'm doing."

"Throwing stuff from across the room. Really."

He wipes his damp hands on the sides of his pants and pushes the piece of paper between them. He taps at one of the diagrams, little arrows drawn in curves or diagonally, "It's all about trajectory."

He looks like he's gearing up to start explaining the Origins of the Bow to her so she intercepts, "Cliffnotes, por favor."

Clint deflates a little bit and Darcy almost feels bad, but listen. She lives with Jane and a line has to be drawn on exactly how much she has to be talked at about things she barely has a grasp on. He's still pouting a little bit when he continues, "Fine. You're missing out, though."

She waves him off, _Get on with it_.

"Ugh. _Fine_. Marksmanship isn't like using a camera. You don't just point and shoot, you know. There's things to consider like wind and the angle of the shot and a whole list of things that are so very out of my control most of the time. That's where math comes in," he taps at the little variables by each arrow. "It helps me calculate all this so I can get a clear shot."

"Woah, woah woah. You're telling me," she says, "that I have to know math to shoot shit? That, basically, I don't have a chance of surviving the zombie apocalypse? Then what the hell have I been doing with my life?"

"Sorry your life's been meaningless."

* * *

Erik lives somewhere SHIELD approved or more commonly understood as, not with the civilian consultants. Darcy never presses for information because Emily Post seemed to have skipped Etiquettes in Alien Mind-Control: The Proper Way to Handle Such Dreary Things part of her lessons. Working seems to be a good way for him to deal with, though. When he and Jane get caught up with the research, it's almost like they're back in New Mexico, still trolling the desert for anomalies.

But they're not.

Instead, she's in the lab at fuck o'clock in the morning trying to put all the scraps of paper three separate geniuses have been scribbling on in some sort of order so she can scan it and let them deal with their own chicken scratch. She'd ask Jane for help except she's pretty much down for the count after being hit with a cold and dose of Nyquil.

It's only her, Erik, and Dr. Banner, with Clint away doing "spy stuff, stuff that spies do." Dr. Banner looks pretty deep into whatever he's doing that includes fire from a Bunsen burner and Erik is having a pretty hard staring contest with the white board. She's pretty much all but ready to beg Erik for help because she can no longer tell if that thing on the corner of the paper was part of the notes or cilantro from lunch when Erik pushes the white board into the wall with a loud clang, growls something Nordic, then stalks out, looking like a caged animal.

Darcy and Dr. Banner make eye contact and Darcy's frozen between flipping pages because Erik doesn't do violent anger; he does wry contempt and condescending hatred, but Darcy has literally never seen the man _angry_. Dr. Banner stands and points vaguely to the door, "I'm gonna – uh. Yeah."

He shuffles out and goes, Darcy assumes, to wherever physics professors let steam out.

She tries to continue flipping through the notes but her hands are shaking. Probably from that third cup of coffee. Yeah. Definitely that.

She's on her sixth when Agent Romanoff walks in the lab.

Darcy sees her walk in and follows her path to the front of her desk but she still can't help but jump when the other woman raps her knuckles gently on the black top of the table.

"So. That was. Weird. You live on top of a guy for a whole summer and you think you know 'em then you turn around for a sec and then they go all Naomi Campbell on a whiteboard."

Agent Romanoff looks slightly amused so Darcy's taking it for a win. She asks Darcy, "Where's Dr. Foster?"

Darcy's been out of it long enough that she blanks out and panics for a second because what if some _other_ fire-breathing-giant-robot got Jane and then she remembers: cold, Nyquil, blanket fortress in their apartment.

Darcy looks at her suspiciously, "You probably know when we go pee."

"I don't. Not personally. Maybe someone in Surveillance," she shrugs like that's something totally normal.

Darcy is too high on exhaustion and caffeine to be properly horrified so the information kind of just rolls off of her and she nods, "Cool. Cool, cool, cool."

"That was a joke."

Darcy nods knowingly and goes for one of those empty phrases you tell people when you've no idea what is happening, "It sure was, champ."

Then Agent Romanoff is all up in her face making intense eye contact, "You don't look like you have a concussion."

Darcy rolls her chair back on its wheels a bit, "I probably don't?"

"Is that a question?"

"Well, I mean if I did will I remember it? What if it caused amnesia? Oh my God, what if I've had bouts of amnesia my whole life and I just never remember it because, you know, _amnesia_. Wait. Is that a thing? Fuck, I was just kidding, please tell me that's not a real thing."

"It's not. Probably not. I'll check with Medical."

Darcy looks at her through squinted eyes, "That's not funny."

Agent Romanoff shrugs, "I take what I can get."

She raps her knuckles on the black top again, effectively ending the conversation and says, "Come."

Darcy's already following her before she asks, "Wait. Where are we going?"

Agent Romanoff slows down a bit so they're walking side-by-side, "It has been brought to our attention that neither you nor Dr. Foster has been properly debriefed about Dr. Selvig's condition."

"Uh, no I'm pretty sure we were. You were there. Jane was there. I was there. That suit was there, then Jane made him cry."

"I have it under good authority that Agent Robinson did not cry at that junction."

"Yeah, but he definitely sniffled a little bit. Jane is scary. I mean, not like you, scary. Not that you're scary. I mean. Um. Your hair looks _really_ good today, Agent Romanoff."

Agent Romanoff picks at her nails, flicking off dirt (Darcy resolutely does not think BLOOD, SHE'S CLEANING DRIED BLOOD FROM UNDER HER NAILS FROM FACES SHE PROBABLY PUNCHED AND THROATS SHE POSSIBLY RIPPED) and says, "There is a certain currency to being feared and I cash in regularly. She's a bit subtler about it, but so does Dr. Foster."

Darcy wants to say, _I don't know what that means_, but she's seen Jane in front of grant committees, squeezing out as much as she can because duct tape shouldn't be the permanent solution to equipment falling apart and because she thought Darcy was underpaid (she totally was, because being classified as an intern translates to being the bottom of the barrel when it comes to compensation). When Jane gets on a high horse, it's one that comes with spikes on its hooves.

As far as choices for role models go, it's probably not that healthy, but it's pretty fucking awesome and Darcy's not known for going with healthy instead of awesome (See: Funnel Cake Debacle, Age 8 in which she ate an inhuman amount of funnel cakes at the dinky carnival her school had every year to prove to Matt Park that, "Nu-uh, I'm _way_ better at stuff than you!").

They stop in front of an unmarked door and Agent Romanoff is reaching for the knob when Darcy speaks up, "Wait. Seriously. Debrief me about this debrief because going in blind is not something I like doing when it comes to these kind of things. Also, you hair actually, totally looks bitchin' today."

"We're just going through Dr. Selvig's situation. There's nothing you need to worry about," she opens the door and ushers Darcy in. She's already three steps into the room when Agent Romanoff calls out from behind the closing door, "By the way, it's Natasha."

The door's already closed by the time Darcy processes she's on a first name basis with an assassin.

She's still trying to adjust to this when she surveys the room. Jane is looking bleary-eyed, swaddled in flannel and sweatshirts sitting on a loveseat, seemingly confused as to where she is and how she got there with Erik on an armchair next to the loveseat.

She shuffles towards the loveseat next to Jane and smiles brightly at Erik who looks at her apologetically. She pokes at Jane, who doesn't even react, "Should you be vertical right now?"

Jane looks at her quizzically, "I went Nyquil when I think should've gone Dayquil?"

Darcy reaches to put her arm around Jane when she coughs one of those chest-cavity rattling coughs and Darcy's seriously rethinking relocating when a harmless looking man in a suit comes in with a kind of serenity on his face that Darcy's learned to recognize as Not At All Harmless. He's hugging a leather portfolio case to his chest with one hand and adjusting his glasses with his other. He smiles benignly, "Miss Lewis, Doctor Foster, Doctor Selvig, good afternoon. I'm Agent Sitwell. It's come to our attention that we haven't fully explained the situation that we threw you in. Or give Dr. Selvig an opportunity to explain, at the very least."

Jane looks as alert as she can be, "Situation? We're in a situation?"

Erik coughs a little and Jane looks at him a little bewildered, like she forgot he was there. Darcy wonders exactly how much Nyquil she took.

Erik coughs again and starts, "There has been… side-effects after my, uh, possession. It's, uh, it's nothing serious, I don't think. We, I, wasn't sure to the, I suppose, extent of the Tesseract's influence after, well, _after_."

Jane's reaching over to comfort him, but stops short of climbing over the arm of the couch, "Are you alright? They said that you were all right! Jesus, I'm not doing this without you and if you don't think you're anything but ready. Well. Government contracts can kiss my ass, I hear they still want me in Tromsø." At this, Jane looks pointedly at Agent Sitwell who sighs a little bit, he looks pointedly at Erik who is already placating Jane.

"Jane, listen to me, this is nothing-"

"The hell it is! They told me you were fine-"

"-I am fine. There's just some lingering-"

"-and unless I missed the collective agreement of changing the definition of fine-"

"-effects. Listen, this is something I need to deal with and working on the Einstein-Rosen Bridge is actually helping."

Jane pauses, "You're not just saying that, right?"

"You know I'm not. I'll have you know, I'm a selfish old man who does what he wants."

Jane smiles a little, then remembers that she's worried about Erik, "Fine, but I need to know you're gonna step back when you start feeling anything less than optimal."

"So, uh, earlier, that was you not optimal?" Darcy doesn't want to break the conga line of love right now, but this debriefing has so far been the opposite of informational.

Jane's back to alert and bewildered, "Wait. What? What happened earlier? This is why I don't sleep!"

Darcy looks at her incredulously, "No, you don't sleep because you're a weirdo hoping to reach science nirvana through sleep depravation." While Erik looks apologetically to Darcy and says at the same time, "I _am_ sorry you had to see that."

And then they're talking over each other like they're back in cramped RV, Jane asking (and being ignored) what she missed, while Darcy and Erik played the 'Really It's Alright' 'Are You Sure' game. They're basically on a verge of a group hug if they were the group hugging kind of people when Agent Sitwell politely coughs from his corner of the room.

Erik mutters something about 'Jack booted thugs in a suit,' but continues with his explanation, "Right. Side effects. I suppose I'd have to try to explain the Tesseract's power and, well. It basically opens your mind to knowledge; it showed me what I needed to know, it showed me everything. When Thor said magic and science were the same, they really are." He pauses, struggling with his words. His hands move, trying to recreate some unseen force, trying to mold it into something tangible with the air around him. "There's just. Something. That is blocking our minds from grasping the concept. I can't. I can't properly explain it, not now anyway."

Darcy leans forward, "Woah, you basically had google for your brain."

Jane squints at Erik, "The Bridge then, you saw – you understand how it works? To open it?"

"Maybe. I saw a lot of things. I learned a lot of things. But now. After," he lets out a sound of frustration. "I know I know things, but that veil that stops us from seeing beyond our laws. It's back. And I can't – it keeps slipping from me. But your equations. Jane, when they're going in the right direction, it's like a revelation. The knowledge, it just comes back to me. It comes in these bursts where I can _taste_ the Bifrost. And then it stops. The wall is back up again and I don't know which equation will lead where or do what."

He looks carefully at Darcy, the apology back in his face, "That's what this morning was. We were making so much headway and everything was making _so much_ sense and then. Nothing. And I suppose it's frustrating, to have all that taken away in an instant. And. Well, I don't think I can apologize enough for scaring you like that."

Darcy wants to say 'It's okay, I'm totally cool with random bursts of violence!' But, well, she wasn't. At the same time she understands that Erik's going through pretty much the definition of shit and she was a big girl. So she reaches across Jane and pats Erik's clenched fist lightly, "We're gonna get through this. We're gonna open that rainbow bridge and make a buncha dead white dudes proud! Yeah! Team science!"

She has a fist to the air before she realizes it and Jane is looking at her fuzzily, like she's not sure if she's dreaming this while Erik smiles fondly. Their Three Musketeers vibe ends when Agent Sitwell (who was still there, being polite and non-lethal) clears his throat, "Well, I think that clears most of any confusion of your situation. If any other mediation is needed, please fill out the proper paperwork to schedule such a meeting with me or any other agent with proper clearance to the subject."

He's still smiling blandly and Darcy can read the, 'Please get out of my office,' pretty clearly on his face so she ushers Jane, and her mass of sweatshirts, then Erik out the door, who nods thankfully to Agent Sitwell.

Both are out in the hallway, shuffling towards the general direction of the lab, when Darcy stops by the door. Agent Sitwell looks at her with a frighteningly pleasant face. Darcy pulls up her big girl pants and says, "Listen, I don't know how to do this because this is pretty much out of the scope of experiences, so, uh. Thanks for this. The whole mediation thing. I guess. I don't know how to end this so, uh, that'll do pig."

She shoots him her (un)patented finger guns and closes the door to his (incrementally) amused face.

* * *

I hope Selvig's situation wasn't too convoluted. I'm sure there are levels of trauma hidden somewhere there, but I wanted to know where all that information went. Still in his brain apparently (for me anyway).


End file.
